Day One
by Lapsed Pacifist
Summary: The last thing I remember was listening to the doctors at the ER talk about "hypovolemic shock" and something about trauma and - well, it didn't sound good, you know? When I next woke up, a tall woman in a lab coat was flashing a light into my eyes and calling me Sasuke. [OC, semi-SI. No godlike powers. Info/warnings at the top of first chapter.]
1. Chapter 1

I just finished "Sakura" by Darkpetal16? (If OC/SI stories appeal to you, go check that one out, it's fun) and the idea of being tossed into the narutoverse and taking over somebody's body really appealed to me? I know there's plenty of these stories featuring Sakura, but... I kind of wanted to try somebody else. I'm totally not here for the quality writing so if you're not into this kind of silly, messy thing you should probably stop reading now.

**So, warnings for this story:** OC semi-SI. This story will involve fat people, skinny people, mentally disordered people, queer people, violence, straight people and, yes, even people who _aren't wearing proper underpants_. ***sunglasses*** Deal with it.

(Addendum: if you cannot deal with it, there are a lot of other fics on this website. I recommend those.)

* * *

How this whole thing happened remains basically mysterious to me.

So, it started like this: there was a car crash. Our car was crushed by a semitrailer. My parents died. My sister died.

I survived, or, well - most of me survived, for a little while - and the last thing I remember was listening to the doctors at the ER talk about "hypovolemic shock" and something about trauma and - well, it didn't sound good. I was swiftly hooked up to a million softly-beeping machines and loaded up with fluids and -

I wasn't sure if I was dying or not, but I was on a lot of drugs and the doctors were a little oblique about it, and I was in such a state of shock that I barely remembered what they'd told me anyway.

I still have no idea what happened to me.

Last I knew I was twenty-three, driving away from my university graduation with my parents and my sister and being mercilessly teased about how, with my shiny new literature degree, I was now fully qualified to work at a fast-food chain.

When I next woke up, a tall woman in a lab coat was flashing a light into my eyes and calling me Sasuke.

Look, I've read some of Naruto - not all of it, for god's sakes, do you know how long that thing is? - but it definitely wasn't my first thought. Sarutobi Sasuke is one of the most famous fictional ninja ever, and all I could think was that she was talking about one of the Sanada Ten Braves.

It was strange, though, I didn't feel... well, I didn't feel sick, just kind of exhausted and headachey.

"I'm afraid what ever technique Itachi-ta - Uchiha Itachi," the doctor corrected herself, looking a little disturbed even as she kept checking my vitals, "What ever technique was used on you has done some damage, Sasuke-kun," she informed me.

I blinked once, slowly.

She paused.

"Sasuke-kun, I will need some confirmation that you understand what I'm saying," said the doctor hesitantly.

Did I understand the words? Sure. Did I understand the meaning? Not... so much. "I do," I said. "Where am I?"

It was definitely not the hospital room I'd fallen asleep in.

She looked briefly relieved. "Konoha General Hospital. You've been unconscious for some time, Sasuke-kun. How much do you remember?"

Konoha General. What?

"I..." I thought hard. The crash came to me then: the yowl of tortured metal, screams and breaking glass, heat and pressure. It had been so _loud_.

And everybody except me had been declared dead at the scene. "Oh," I said softly. "My family's -" I stopped.

I breathed.

"Yes. You're more or less up to date, then," said the doctor, whose bedside manner needed some work. "Now, with regard to the technique used on you," she went on, "I've never seen anything like it. There's been a serious alteration in your brain patterns, but it doesn't seem to have affected its normal functioning. Your chakra, however..."

There was a pause. "Chakra is made of mixed physical and mental energies," she said slowly, "and unfortunately it seems that yours are now... misaligned, a little. What the effect of that might be, we can't say for certain, but it could definitely have an impact on your futu- Sasuke-kun, are you listening to me?"

I wasn't, not really. I heard her, but honestly I was busy puzzling over what the hell kind of hospital seriously talked about chakra like it was a real thing. Alternative medicine was an alternative to medicine, and hospitals din't usually have traffic with that sort of stuff. A lot of this conversation seemed to indicate that I'd been kidnapped by rabid anime nerds, but it seemed a little too well organised.

Also, who on earth would bother?

I got out of the bed and nearly fell over because the floor was much, much farther away than I expected. I'm... you know, I'm only about five foot six, but suddenly, inexplicably, I was...

I wobbled on my bare feet.

My tiny, bare, prepubescent feet.

"Sasuke-kun?" the doctor repeated warily.

"I want to see outside," I said, and even I could hear how strained I sounded.

There was an uncertain pause, and then the doctor sighed and came around to me. "All right," she said patiently, and helped me over to the window.

Outside, the birds were singing and the air was surprisingly fresh - it didn't taste like city air, that was for sure. The buildings I could see were worn but very sturdy, and all had roofs of scuffed tile, and most of them were connected by a series of power lines that seemed to cross and hang with no real purpose or direction.

It was a walled city, nestled in the shadow of a mountain. And... I could see Hashirama's nose looming to one side of the window.

My 'rabid anime nerds' theory was getting thinner and thinner by the second. I looked down at my hands on the window sill.

So... the Naruto universe, huh. I was suddenly fiercely annoyed at myself for reading A Room of One's Own instead of more fun, bullshit manga.

Seriously, what the hell was the point of Virginia Woolf in a stylised fuedal Japan with anachronistic technology and _magic using ninja_? Ninja are magic, your argument is invalid.

Christ.

I looked down. My hands were tiny. Sasuke's hands were tiny.

I was Sasuke.

A shadow leapt from rooftop to rooftop out in the village. I watched it until it dropped away between buildings.

Ninja.

Seriously.

"Sasuke-kun?"

"I'm fine," I said quickly.

"That's what I was trying to tell you," the doctor said, laying one hand one my shoulder. "You're not quite fine. Your mental energy has grown exponentially and far exceeded your physical energy, which... it's very rare, Sasuke-kun, we haven't documented it well. You may struggle with some kinds of chakra manipulation."

I nodded. "I understannd," I said.

The doctor looked like she was expecting a different reaction, but... really, what could I say? I felt like screaming at her - I'm lost! I'm stuck! What the hell am I doing here! - but she wanted to talk about chakra manipulation. Even Sasuke, right now, surely - surely he'd be more focused on the massacre, and -

My brain was awhirl with confusion.

I rubbed my wrists uncertainly. They were so little.

I struggled to think of the physical feats Uchiha Sasuke had performed in the manga. Could he really...?

I rubbed my forehead, feeling confused and anxious.

Some of this must have communicated itself to the doctor.

"Come back to bed now," the doctor ordered, pulling me away from the window and its captivating, terrifying view. "We want to keep you for observation for a little while, but you should be able to go home in a day or so."

I went obediently. It was probably a good thing I wasn't Sasuke, because my doctor evidently had all the empathy of a pile driver. Sasuke - and I - had little in the way of a home to return to, since everybody either of us loved was _dead_.

I wasn't very good at understanding all this.

If anything, the nurses seemed relieved when, a few hours later, I started crying and couldn't seem to stop.

It wasn't me mourning my own parents and sister, even. I was just lost, and alone, and terribly afraid. But the nurses saw a boy coming out of a massacre able to think about it clearly enough to cry.

Stupid girl, I thought. Who's that going to help?

* * *

I was there for another day.

A quartet of clucking lady nurses - or, as I determined from listening to them, recently qualified assistant nurses - came by to coo at me.

"Poor thing," murmured one of them.

"It's an absolute tragedy," said another, peering at me from the doorway and clicking her tongue. "And Itachi-taichou always seemed so quiet and respectful!"

They were really rude. I took a deep breath. Did they think they were being quiet? (They were not being quiet.)

I had no idea what to do - did I tell them off? Did I ask them to come into the room properly? Talk to them? Ask them to leave? - so I just stared at my callused little hands and pretended I couldn't see the onlookers.

It was ten minutes - ten objectively short but subjectively _interminable_ minutes - before an even, amused male voice sounded over the top of them, "Don't you have actual work to do?"

There was a startled yelp and a chorus of responses ranging from apology to complaint, and then the mass exodus of the group from the corridor. Once they'd left, I could see a ninja in the doorway. He was fit, shorter than the men I was used to but well-formed, and he had honey-brown hair and sharp eyes. There was a pleasant kind of angularity to his face.

I'd have found him attractive, except, oh yeah, _I hadn't hit puberty yet._

Unless this body was only attracted to girls? I was used to being attracted to girls, but I'd miss men.

That was a weird thought.

...I was just going to try not to think about that.

The ninja's wrist was strapped and bandaged for support, hinting at some kind of injury, and his stance made me wonder if he was favouring his leg or his ribs or something.

It took me a few seconds to recognise him as Shiranui Genma, mostly because he didn't have a senbon between his teeth. I wasn't sure if Sasuke was supposed to know him or not.

"Uchiha Sasuke?" he asked, even though he had to know who I was, which I suppose answered my question. We must be strangers.

It turned out he was there to escort Sasuke home - an off-roster jounin doing odd jobs for the Hokage until his wrist healed, apparently - and I ended up just getting dressed in the clothes he tossed onto the bed and following him.

He didn't say anything while we walked. A lot of the people outside on the street followed me with their eyes, and sometimes conversations stopped all together and resumed, faster and more hushed, after we'd passed. I'd have to have been an idiot not to notice.

The Uchiha district was like its own little village. Its own... empty... little village. I looked around. There was room for a few hundred, which seemed like... a lot.

A lot of dead people.

Itachi was one seriously messed up kid.

"Is..." my voice was a bit rusty. I hadn't spoken much in the past two days. "Is this all mine, now?"

Genma scratched his chin. "More or less," he said vaguely. "There's probably a trust or something, I don't know the details."

I nodded. A trust. It made sense, but I'd need to investigate it.

Genma paused outside the steps of one of the larger houses.

It looked like this was the clan head's house. It was very traditional, very minimalist and elegant. There was a pond, with little rocks situated around it in a way that probably had some meaning I was missing. I could almost sense the presence of rice paper divides and tatami mats beyond the walls.

At least the traditional architecture would let a lot of light in.

"You don't have to stay here, you know," Genma said slowly. "If you're worried. But there's almost no chance of Itachi getting back into Konoha, so..."

I blinked in surprise, and then shook my head. That was the last thing I was worried about, although I probably should have considered it. Of course Itachi wasn't coming back to Konoha.

"No," I said, "it's fine."

I don't know what he was thinking, watching me with my eyes fixed on the house. I probably looked horribly lost.

Because I _was_, dammit.

"If you're sure." Genma hesitated for a second, but then he turned and walked away.

I stayed where I was for a few long minutes, trying to process.

Over the past days, I'd decided that I had probably died, back in my world. I didn't know much about medicine, but words, them I understood. Now that I could think clearly, I could figure out what those doctors had been talking about. ...and I had a sneaking suspicion that 'hypovolemic shock' had really meant I'd been dying of blood loss.

So. Probably dead, which meant no going back.

I scratched my head.

The house loomed.

"Okay," I muttered to myself.

Sasuke's house had been left more or less as Itachi had left it. Somebody had gone and removed all the bodies, and most of the blood had been scrubbed clean, but there was still furniture overturned and walls with slashes in them from somebody's sword. There was broken crockery in one room.

The bedrooms were ...hard. Harder, somehow, for how little the violence had reached them.

They looked undisturbed, waiting for their owners to return and bed down for the night.

Itachi had made his bed before he'd left, I noticed.

I stared at it for a while.

Slowly, I crept into his room. The bedding was clean. Everything was put away in its place. Itachi at thirteen was more organised and better-kempt than I was at twenty three, apparently.

Looking at the closet, I didn't think he'd taken much with him. There was almost no personality to the room, really. The two books on his shelf were Konoha codes of practice and a history of the noble Uchiha clan, both of which I suspected had been picked for him, not by him.

It was very... clean.

Sasuke's room disturbed me. He was a very young boy, although judging from the materials in his room he was probably clever for his age.

I couldn't stay in here. Staying here would mean immersing myself in the person I'd replaced. I swallowed. What was left? The master bedroom? No. God, no.

Eventually I decided on Itachi's room.

I took the stuff I'd need from Sasuke's room - books, notes, homework, clothes, blunted practice weapons - and I moved them into Itachi's. Then I closed up Sasuke's room and left it.

It was very clean in Itachi's room, but... clean was good.

Clean was okay.

With that thought in mind, I turned my attention to the rest of the house. Some things needed to be cleaned up and thrown away, and others needed to be fixed. Food in the refrigerator desperately needed to be thrown out, and it occurred to me that I should probably go through the other houses in the compound and at the very least dispose of the rotting food, which would almost certainly attract vermin if I left it too long.

I didn't relish the thought of clearing it all out, though.

But, still, somebody had to do it.

And given that everybody else was dead, I supposed that somebody was likely to be me.

I wondered if Sasuke would have. He wasn't very old - I woudn't have had the discipline at his age. I'd have curled up in bed and ignored the issue until it went away.

Oh, well.

Cleaning ensued.

This was also a relatively good way to familiarise myself with the clan compound. Since I was stuck being Sasuke, I was going to need to know what Sasuke knew - or at least not make it obvious what I'd forgotten. The trauma of losing his family could account for a lot of personality changes, but I wasn't sure if it would work to account for semantic memory loss...It was best I try, anyway.

It was strange. I always thought that Sasuke seemed terribly popular in the manga, but nobody came to visit me. It was just me and the empty Uchiha compound.

On my fourth morning in Konoha I got up with the sun and went running. Despite the odd sandal-shoes and the strange environment, it felt blessedly normal. This, at least, was something familiar to me.

Of course, I expected to jog for about five kilometers, until I was sweating and shaking and I couldn't think anymore, and then stumble gasping through a cool down walk back to my house. That didn't quite turn out as I'd expected.

Uchiha Sasuke could do this _literally for hours._

I wished I had an MP3 player, because apparently I could have just rolled out of bed and run a marathon without even feeling it the next day. Not only that, but I was _fast_. That marathon? I was pretty sure this body could do it in two and a half hours.

And, good god, Sasuke had been _unconscious_ for a few weeks, thanks to Itachi's torturous genjutsu.

I gave it an hour and sailed back to the house at an easy jog. My body's physical conditioning was ridiculous. I wondered if all ninja kids were like this?

And adult ninja, at the peak of their training... they must be _better_.

To be able to move tirelessly, to rely so completely on your body - if I'd been having second thoughts about continuing with Sasuke's career choice, I wasn't anymore.

Yeah, I _totally_ wanted to be a ninja.

* * *

**Reviews are sunshine and love and sparkles. : )**


	2. Chapter 2

Going to the academy - or, well, from the academy's perspective, returning to the academy -was... awkward.

In the few days I took off following the murder of Sasuke's family, I went over his notes. He was a blessedly good student, and some of it was mathematics or common knowledge that I didn't need to learn. Other stuff was history, and there was a fair bit of tactical knowledge, exercises on mission planning and the like. It didn't seem terribly difficult, but Sasuke was meticulous for his age.

I would have to be, too.

I got there in time for all of the other kids' parents to look at me and make pitying expressions, following which several of them pulled their children close to murmur into their ears. Then the children started looking at me with wide eyes and trembling lips.

I felt extremely uncomfortable, and very, very guilty.

Just because I hadn't planned it and couldn't have helped it didn't mean I wasn't an enormous fake. I didn't enjoy the sympathy, but even worse, I didn't deserve it.

I saw some familiar faces, recognisable even though manga pages really didn't do enough justice to the character of a person's features. Yamanaka Inoichi was easily recognisable, at least, because his hair went on practically forever. Despite the feminine style, nobody would be mistaking his sex: he was broad-shouldered and hard faced, and even though he had to be at least mid-thirties and, as far as I knew, worked mostly inside the village, there were parts of him that actually rippled. They sure hadn't captured _that_ in the manga.

This morning he must have drawn the short straw, because he was trailing a chattering Ino and a munching Chouji, and had Shikamaru slumped over one shoulder.

As I watched, he set the lanky kid down and poked him until he woke up. "Honestly," he muttered, spinning Shikamaru by the shoulders and setting him marching toward the school building. He gave him a little shove, and Shikamaru gave him a resentful look, which went completely ignored.

Ino followed, already complaining about how lazy her friend was. "Bye, Daddy!" she called out over her shoulder, waving to him with a bright smile.

What I'd initially thought was a hard and unyielding face completely transformed under the devastating effect of his daughter's smile. He melted. It wiped a decade off him. "Bye, Ino-chaaan," he called back, sounding just as cheerful as his young daughter.

Now _that_ was cute.

"Uchiha-kun, don't you have class?" he added, just loudly enough to carry to me, which was when I realised he knew I'd been watching him all along.

Whoops. I blinked.

"I do," I agreed, but I still hesitated.

I didn't want to stay out here with him, but I didn't really want to go in and have people staring at me either. What would Sasuke have done? Acted indifferent, I suppose. I looked up at the sign for "fire" over the doorway of the academy.

Inoichi heaved a sigh and approached, making an effort to make a little noise as he moved. I kept expecting him to stop, but he kept coming closer, and for a second I thought he might reach out and touch me.

It wasn't that I was crazy or traumatised or anything just... well, I was used to being a young woman, and Inoichi was a lot bigger than me, and, well, most women know what it's like to be grabbed or touched unexpectedly. It's not fun. It's creepy as all fuck.

I stepped away, but between my anxiety and Sasuke's muscle memory, it turned out less like a step and more like a quick dodge.

Inoichi froze at the same time as I did, although with more wariness than surprise.

Me? I was surprised. Sometimes I hated this new body as much as I loved it.

My shock must have been evident, because Inoichi relaxed. "Been a rough week?" he asked carefully, shoving his hands in his pockets.

I was absolutely certain nobody had had this conversation with Sasuke. He would have turned his nose up and walked off, determined to find his own way. I wasn't that strong. ...or that stubborn.

Watching Inoichi with his daughter reminded me of how my family, my real family, was dead. How I was dead. And also how the whole Uchiha clan was dead.

I shifted uncomfortably. I wanted that support. Badly. But at the same time, I - well, I couldn't tell anybody about anything real, anyway. I...

I was so fucking confused. "Rough," I said. Then, "yeah."

It certainly had been that.

He nodded. "You might find it gets easier, the more you do normal things," he suggested cautiously.

I looked at him.

"We're all ninja, Uchiha-kun," he pointed out in a softer voice. "We've all lost people. Not in the same way, of course," he added with a little wince, "but..." he paused, eyes distant for a moment.

That, at least, was true. Inoichi was a war vet. If nothing else, he definitely knew about people dying. For a precious second I didn't feel so isolated. "Aa," I said after a moment. I still wasn't sure what Sasuke would say. I didn't even know what he'd been like when he was this young.

Maybe I should just stop worrying about what Sasuke would do. Right now I was Sasuke, so I might as well act like myself.

"You should get to class," Inoichi told me in a more normal voice. "But, Uchiha-kun," he said after a pause, "remember there's plenty of names on the memorial stone, ne?"

There were. There was probably not a ninja alive who didn't know the pain of losing somebody. Naruto, maybe - but he had the experience of never having had somebody to begin with. That, surely, was even worse.

"I will," I said, nodding. Then I turned and followed the path Ino and Chouji had taken earlier. At least I knew they were all in my class.

Class was boring. Initially it seemed interesting because the information all formed a web with Sasuke's meticulous notes, and I felt like I learned a lot about the culture just listening to the way we were taught. But after that... well, there was a lot of theoretical stuff I already knew.

I was always terrible at the more advanced mathematics we had to do in school - calculus, oh my god, no, just no - but ninja were required to do different kinds of calculations. Budgeting for a long term mission, measurements for astronavigation, percentages, rates of currency exchange - these were useful, practical things, and mostly they were the kind of mathematics I was much better at.

Then there were mission scenarios given by sensei, and exercises where we were split into groups to determine the best course of action. The first group I was assigned to contained a purple-haired girl called Ami, Shikamaru, and a kid with a spiky ponytail and a white shirt with black piping. He looked a little familiar, but I couldn't place him.

I let Ami and Ponytail Boy hash it out, watching the way they interacted. As far as I could tell, neither of them were very good at this task.

"Ne," said Ami after ten minutes of absolute chaos in the classroom in which all the children seemed determined to be heard over one another, "Sasuke-kun agrees with me, don't you?"

I blinked. _Sasuke-kun_? Surely it hadn't started already? These girls were _eight_!

Shikamaru rolled his face so his cheek was resting on his forearm. One sloe eye was visible, and it was regarding me.

"Not really," I said after a second. She looked _crushed_.

"But Hideo's idea is _stupid_," she protested.

I decided I wasn't going to comment on that, because Hideo's idea _was_ stupid, in the overzealous way children's ideas are often wont to be. I shrugged.

"What's your plan?" Shikamaru said finally, looking at me.

That was annoying, because I was pretty sure whatever I could come up with, Shikamaru could do better. Still... I had _some_ ideas. A degree in literature _did_ tend to feature reading about warfare, since killing each other was basically a universal hobby of mankind.

I shrugged one shoulder. "Make a sound in the east, then strike in the west," I said. I was quoting, but they didn't know that.

Ami and Hideo looked confused, but Shikamaru grunted and closed his eyes again. "Go with that one," he said.

"That doesn't even make sense!" Ami growled. She scowled at him. Hideo scowled at me.

Shikamaru mumbled something about yelling and covered his head with his arms, which reminded me that he, too, was actually a small child.

"It means that we should distract them," I explained, "so they move their forces in one direction, and then attack from another direction completely. We get to pick where the fight starts, we attack where their defences are weaker, and we get to surprise them."

"It's a good strategy for new genin," Sensei said from over my shoulder, surprising me with his nearness. "Low risk fighting protects your team mates." I blinked up at him. "Good to know you're still our best student, Sasuke-kun," he said with a smile.

I glanced at Shikamaru, but he didn't look up, and Sensei continued walking among the screaming, bickering children. I thought Ami was going to flip out at me, but after a second she shrugged and wrote down the answer I'd given. Hideo glowered at me like I'd done something wrong. I ignored him because I was not, in fact, eight years old.

Somewhere across the room, Ino and Kiba had begun a screaming match. Shikamaru made a troubled noise and hunched further. "So noisy."

Privately, I agreed with him, but I liked to think I had enough self control not to bury my face in my arms and doze through class. I noticed that Shikamaru hadn't bothered to write anything down at all.

Ah, well.

When we were set free for lunch, I peered around the playground - which was, actually, a glorified training arena, where there were wooden stumps of different sizes and slalom poles and trees of the perfect height and shape for us to climb. There were two hills that didn't really look that natural, and which had odd-coloured markers discarded on top. Presumably they were for playing some kind of ninja variant of capture the flag, I decided.

The other children basically ignored the actual purpose of all this. Kiba was cackling wildly as he leapt from the top of one slalom pole to the next, preceeded by an excited Akamaru. Sakura - who was not in my class, but whose group took their break at the same time - was perched on top of one of the hills with Ino and a couple of the other girls. I wasn't sure what was going on there, but from the excited fluttering of Ino's hands, she was holding forth on some topic of great interest.

I hesitated. I wasn't really sure who to sit with. I wasn't really sure if I wanted to sit with anybody.

I was honest enough with myself to know that I rather desperately needed a friend. I was reeling from a combination of my family's deaths, my death, the jarring unfamiliarity of a new world, not actually knowing anyone -

Yeah, I needed a confidante. Or at least somebody to cling to for a while.

Unfortunately, I was probably a lot closer to the intellectual level of these kids' parents than the children themselves.

I settled between the sprawling roots of a tall tree and meticulously unpacked my lunch. I hadn't really had the opportunity to cook much, since I'd been too busy organising the absolute wreck that was my life, and so my lunch consisted of hard boiled eggs and chopped tomato.

"That doesn't look very nice," Chouji commented. He set himself down about three feet away, legs crossed, and retrieved a packet of chips from... I wasn't entirely sure, actually. A sealing scroll?

I glanced at him. "It's not. I haven't had time," I said.

He held out his packet.

Chips. They did look tasty, but a sense of guilt rose like a wave within me and I shook my head. "I'm fine," I said.

He looked dubious.

"You don't want to play ninja?" I asked, nodding toward where Hideo had rounded up a couple of the other kids and was failing spectacularly to organise them in any way.

Chouji eyed them. "I don't think they'd let me," he said, much as though it didn't bother him in the slightest. "Besides," he added, "Shikamaru'd prefer to sit out." He nodded toward where the other boy was resting, just a tree or two away. His dark eyes were fixed on the clouds.

"Aa," I murmured, and bit into another egg.

It was...

Well, I could have at least remembered to salt it.

I didn't dislike Chouji, I just didn't know entirely what to say to him. I had no idea how well Sasuke knew him, or how he expected me to behave. I was naturally rather quiet and introverted, so it seemed like the best way to reconcile the problem was just to sit in silence with him.

"Hey, hey," said a loud voice, interrupting my reverie, and I looked up to find Kiba looming close. He'd gotten quite dirty in the ten or fifteen minutes we'd been outside. "Is it true your _whole family_ died?" he asked, wide-eyed.

I blinked. Distantly, I heard Shikamaru sigh.

Well, that was... blunt. Still, it was kind of good to have somebody actually say it, instead of just tiptoeing around the idea and leaving spaces rife with implications.

He was an eight year old kid, and as far as I knew, he wasn't going to become more tactful any time soon.

"Yes," I said, deciding not to take offence.

He looked at me like he hadn't really thought ahead far enough to envisage this answer. After a second he squinted at me. "Is that why you've been gone for so long?" he asked. "Did you get hurt too?"

"...Yes," I said again, which was probably not entirely honest, but it was a lot easier than explaining the craziness that was the Tsukuyomi.

He nodded like this was a very satisfying answer, and then ran off hollering something like a neurotic rabbit on steroids.

Kids, I thought in confusion.

"Kiba's weird," Chouji commented, chomping on another chip.

"You're all weird," I muttered.

He shrugged.

* * *

Thanks, **Domino necklace** (I'm sorry, ffnet has strong feels about the period in your username and won't let me write it properly) - I like those sorts of fics, too. I started out really wanting to write a _completely_ different kind of story, but I ended up with this one. I'm glad there are other people out there who like OC-takes-over-a-body/is-reborn type fics. xD

Hello, **Juliedoo**, thank you for your kind review! I don't know that this character is really cut out to take full advantage of Sasuke's potential as a ninja, but it'll be interesting to see how far I can go with it : P**  
**

Please don't expect future updates to be this quick! I am hoping that by only having chapters of 2000 - 3000 words, I will make it easier to update more frequently, but twice in a day is definitely going to be uncommon. : )

I do like reviews though, so please feel encouraged and/or free to leave one.


	3. Chapter 3

There were physical activities after lunch, which was good because it allowed me to find out that, no, actually, _not_ all ninja children were as fit and conditioned as I was in my new body.

The kids from civilian families certainly weren't, and some of the ninja clans' kids like Ino, Shikamaru and Chouji didn't seem that enthused about the exercise program. It was hard to tell with Ino and Shikamaru, though, because they didn't seem motivated to try very hard.

On the other hand, it looked like the children doing best were definitely the ones from well known ninja clans. It was no surprise that as soon as he was told to run, Kiba gave an enormous cheerful whoop and took off at a breakneck speed that only slowed a little over the afternoon. Akamaru, even tinier than I'd seen him in the manga, chased after him, dashed ahead, circled around - there was a lot of chatter and excited yipping, and Kiba never even seemed winded.

Hinata, too, was surprisingly swift and steady in the exercises - I'd always thought of Hinata as a shy, kind of weirdly ugly girl who was soft and pale and - well, the sort of person you'd describe as "a good trier," for wont of anything kinder to say. Uncharitable, but true. Obviously I was wrong.

Our program consisted of five laps around the academy's training area, followed by a series of physical exercises using our bodyweight, followed by a quick series of simple kata and then repeated. Again. And again. And again.

On the second lap of the second set of running around the training area, I found myself alongside Shino, who said nothing. If I concentrated, I thought I could almost hear the dull buzz of the insects under his skin. That was interesting.

He wasn't as excitable as Kiba or as determined as Hinata, but Shino moved at an even, measured pace that was easy to match, and he didn't talk. To be honest, quiet company was basically what I was craving after a week all alone in the sprawling, abandoned Uchiha estate. I wondered if it would seem weird to try to befriend him.

I decided, when we were on our seventh and last cycle through the exercises, that the clan kids almost certainly had some kind of genetic advantage. My new body definitely had it. My hand-eye coordination was perfect. My throwing skills were top-notch. My endurance was fantastic, my speed the highest in the class - even the kata we did flowed smoothly, muscle memory taking hold and singing through my limbs.

The Uchiha clan was really something, I supposed.

Of course, kata were more or less theoretical. Sparring was... not that great.

Oh, god, who am I kidding. Sparring was a minor catastrophe.

I hesitated before every single offensive move. It didn't take long for Shino to wear me down and hand me my arse on a silver platter.

Shino did not look nearly as surprised as Sensei.

By the end of the first month, my taijutsu ranking, previously the best in the class, had dropped significantly. Below Kiba. Way below Shino. It wans't entirely comforting to know that I was, on average, about as good as Chouij - although I suppose at least the Akimichi clan were taijutsu types. I was relying a lot on muscle memory, and that was strange and jarring, but even worse, apparently, was my mentality.

One morning, after a long and tiring spar with Kiba - who couldn't win, but who I couldn't put down, either - Sensei pulled me aside.

"You're being too hesitant to hurt people," he said bluntly. "It's... understandable," he hedged, "but you have to train yourself out of it."

I rubbed my hands through my sweaty hair, making it stick up even worse. (This hair, seriously. What was I going to do with it?) "How?"

"Practice," he said grimly. "Practice, practice, _practice_."

So I practised. Maybe it wasn't a lot compared to people like Uzumaki-I'm-the-main-character-Naruto or Rock Lee, but I clocked about fourteen hours of taijutsu outside classes every week.

It helped, but less than you might think.

At that point, my schedule looked a little like this: I'd rise a little before the sun, stretch, go running, return home, stretch some more, and then practice my taijuttsu strikes against the wooden pillars in the empty Uchiha training grounds. The academy hours began at nine-thirty and went until four, five days a week. On those days I was usually sleepy by the time I returned home, and for the most part I dedicated my evenings to making sure I was fed and clean and that my homework was done.

On the days we had off, I usually extended my run. I'd started fit and swift and I was only getting better. I was running a marathon once a week, easily and without negative repercussions, despite my tiny prepubescent body.

Ninja were so cool.

(Sometimes, running through the village proper in the very early mornings, I was struck by how different things were, and a terrible wave of homesickness washed over me. Sometimes you just had to grit your teeth and wait for it to be over.)

Still, as hard as I tried to be a good ninja, there's a psychological component that people tended to overlook - at least, in this world, because virtually everybody had it. These people had been raised from birth to be perfectly willing to get hurt, willing to fling themselves into danger, willing to hurt other people.

I, on the other hand... I was used to trying to avoid conflict at all costs. It was hard to become good at close combat when you were trying to minimise damage to everyone involved, although I did become very good at dodging.

For me, it wasn't hard to work up enough aggression to damage the wood, but when I was faced with an actual person it was... hard not to balk. Because apparently I was a giant coward.

I was no Uchiha Sasuke, that was for sure.

It was a problem that never did really go away, even after years of working on it at the academy. And then, well, by the time our cohort was ten, the time I might have spent working on it was often taken up with working on the _other_ major problem I encountered in the academy.

My ninjutsu fucking _sucked_.

No, I mean it _really_ sucked. That was not just a psychological problem, and I knew that Sasuke had been - well, a good all-rounder, actually, but mostly a ninjutsu fighter in the manga.

I certainly wasn't expecting it. The first time I tried to make a replacement was... sobering.

Mizuki-sensei was our primary teacher this year, which was all kinds of weird because I remembered him being a giant jerk in the manga and he wasn't, not really.

As long as nobody was discussing the Kyuubi, he was - well, no, he was messed up and bitter either way. But he genuinely seemed to enjoy teaching, and he was actually pretty all right, most of the time.

Funny how people are, isn't it?

"All right," he said, standing at the front of the classroom with a cheerful smile. "Today we're going to actually practice the first of our E-rank jutsu. I know you've all done the reading," he added, eyeing Kiba thoughtfully, "and we've discussed the process, so there shouldn't be any accidents. The worst I'm expecting is that it will fail completely for some of you - that's all right, too," he added, shrugging. "Some people take more practice than others, and it's nothing to be ashamed of. Akimichi Chouji," he said then, calling Chouji down to try it out.

Not everybody was successful, although many of the children were. Hideo accidentally flung himself into the wall and had to be helped out of the cracked plaster amid much laughter, and Kiba's piece of wood set itself on fire for no readily apparent reason.

Still, it looked mostly fun, and I didn't feel like it would be a big problem when I tried it out. I remembered precisely the instructional text I'd read, and I was good at all of the chakra control exercises we'd done so far - uncommonly good, the teachers had said, because usually people with larger pools of chakra struggled a lot. I didn't remember Sasuke having particularly good chakra control in the manga, but I shrugged it off. Maybe it was partially a mental thing.

There were a few murmured giggles as I walked toward the front of the class, which made me uncomfortable, not least because I was so very much older than the girls to whom those giggles belonged. But, well, I couldn't stop them, so I did my best to ignore them.

Mizuki-sensei gave me an encouraging smile and nodded. I drew on my chakra the way I'd been taught. Drawing chakra was kind of weird - unless you were a hell of a natural sensor, there was a fair bit of guessing involved, because there was no real measurement for chakra, except in sweeping terms of rank. Drawing on my chakra, though, was a lot easier now than it had been when we'd started. It was a careful mixing of physical and mental (or 'spiritual') energies.

I made the seals with my hands, slowly and carefully - there was no point showing off how fast I could do them and messing it up! - and I released the buildup of chakra through the seals.

Nothing happened. The chakra didn't even seem to go anywhere. It was as if it wasn't enough, so it wasn't doing anything. I frowned. That was odd. Well, it _was_ hard to measure. Maybe... I needed more than I thought I had?

So I did it again, building up the chakra until it was enough to use for the jutsu. The pressure in my head seemed to increase as I did it, but - well, I'd never really tried an actual jutsu before, and there was always a bit of pressure, even with those minor control exercises. Maybe all ninjutsu felt like that, and you just had to learn to deal with it.

I released the jutsu.

The good news was: I replaced myself.

Unfortunately, the side-effect of replacing myself was that I saw my new location, contemplated my victory, and then -

Let me tell you, colliding with a semitrailer hurt less than whatever happened inside my skull at that moment.

I had a second to witness the smile on Mizuki-sensei's face change to horrified alarm before my vision tunnelled, my hearing thinned, and everything went to static, then blackness.

I woke up three hours later in hospital with a medic peering down at me, green-lit hands slowly drawing away from my head.

I blinked. My head hurt. The light hurt my eyes.

"His records do say his chakra system was affected by an advanced genjutsu placed upon him during the Uchiha Massacre," the medic said, leaning away from me again. I squinted to see who he was talking to, and found Mizuki-sensei standing there, gnawing a thumbnail nervously. After a second, he saw my eyes open and relaxed a little.

"We had hoped that it wouldn't have any long-term effects, but..." the medic sighed. "The problem is that Uchiha-kun has much, much more spiritual energy than physical. The academy teaches students to draw equal amounts of energy to create chakra, and so... I can't swear to it, but you said he did the jutsu correctly?"

Mizuki nodded. "It looked textbook to me," he said slowly. "And then he blacked out."

As a teacher, that must have been scary.

The medic nodded, though. "To do that, he would have been drawing significantly more mental energy than physical, and the energy that was not used in the technique had nowhere to go, so it ...rebounded." He made a gesture that in no way described how much pain I was in.

Mizuki looked pensive. "That's going to make passing the academy difficult," he said slowly, this time directing his comment to me.

The medic glanced at his charts with his brow furrowed. "Not impossible," he said after a few moments examining the information. "Mental energy is usually a much larger component of genjutsu, and two of the academy level jutsu can be replaced with genjutsu with a little creativity."

Mizuki frowned. "Hypothetically, yes," he said, "but genjutsu is much harder to use than those basic ninjutsu."

The medic shrugged. "A problem for another time, Mizuki-sensei. For now, Uchiha-kun should not be allowed to participate in practising ninjutsu."

Oh. Oh, _crap_.

The medic turned to me, finally, and touched a hand to my head. There was a green flicker and he nodded as if satisfied. "Your head is going to hurt for some time, Uchiha-kun," he informed me.

I nodded, and then kind of wished I hadn't. My brain felt sloppy, like too much head movement might make it spill out somehow. "No ninjutsu?" I said.

The medic gave me a sympathetic look. "There are ways to improve your control of your energies, perhaps enough to do some of the lower-ranked ninjutsu," he said. "But I'd strongly recommend you focus on your other skills for now."

"Okay," I said slowly. I glanced at Mizuki-sensei who was rubbing his forehead as though he was thinking precisely what I was: that I now sucked at two of the three shinobi disciplines.

Forget reaching the top of the class like Sasuke had in canon. At this point there was no guarantee I was even going to _graduate_.

* * *

Poor Self Insert-san.

No, actually, I felt like it would be easier to write a character who wasn't a giant Mary Sue if I gave her some handicaps, and these seemed the most obvious: problems with mental/spiritual energy because of her past life, and the mentality that Sasuke has that she definitely doesn't. She's not really me, because I would probably still be hiding under my bed in these circumstances and who the hell wants to read about that? (Actually that could be kind of fun because you know somebody would be sent to get "Sasuke" eventually, lol, and he'd just be going 'No, no, I'm not going to be a ninja, _oh my god_, why would I do that?' and eventually it'd get back to Itachi and he'd be like, '...crap, I broke him.' Yes. Hmm. There's a short story in that, isn't there? ... ***becomes distracted by shiny things* **) but I think it's fair to say that there are reasons _other_ than genetics that Sasuke is the best in the class. His personality has a lot to do with it. *nod*

_**Responses to reviews: **_

**Domino necklace **and **Juliedoo **mentioned Shikamaru, omg. I love Shikamaru, he's so much fun to write! If I had known this before I started I would have just written Shikamaru fanfic, dear god. It's like writing my own spirit animal. ***cackles* **I think if you were stuck socialising with these kids you'd probably have to learn to play shougi _fast_. XD

**Thoroughly Misguided,** you are quite correct. I'm pretty sure if Kiba had any tact he had it cut out to _make room for more awesome!_ The same with his shame. True story. XD

Thank you **lonalow** (lonalow, I had the most ridiculous time trying to figure out if it was I-onalow or L-onalow, because apparently I can't figure out how serifs work without help) and **ElectraSev5n**, who were both very kind. : )

Hello **Strife666!** It was very kind of you to attempt to take a survey of most of the site's users and determine that they aren't interested in yaoi. Unfortunately I feel your statistical analysis could use a little polish. I am eager to hear how the peer reviews go, and wish you all the best with your further research. xx


	4. Chapter 4

Mizuki walked me home - less, I think, out of kindness and more out of the understanding that he would be facing a seething village council if the last Uchiha kid passed out and expired in the middle of the street when he was meant to be watching me - but he blanched when I turned toward the derelict Uchiha compound, like he'd forgotten it was where I lived. He eyed the high walls and empty buildings uncertainly.

I took pity on him. "I can make it from here, Mizuki-sensei."

He flicked a look in my direction, one which seemed resentful. I wasn't sure why - it wasn't my fault he was obvious.

"You'll need to focus on improving your taijutsu if you want to graduate," he said after an awkward pause, ignoring my comment. "And I'll assign you something else to do during jutsu practice," he added thoughtfully.

I pretended his change of subject had been a lot smoother than it was. I nodded, and he preceeded me into the clan compound with a faintly grim expression. Fleetingly, I wondered if he was afraid of ghosts. He distracted me when he spoke again.

"We can make it an extra credit assignment," he said, warming to the idea. Which was good, because the way this was going I was going to need all the extra credit I could get. "Do you have any ideas about what you might want to learn about?"

There were a lot of areas that weren't really covered in the academy that the teachers undoubtedly knew something about. Codes, genjutsu, fuuinjutsu basics, kenjutsu... Some of those might be really useful to learn.

"Didn't the medic say that genjutsu required more mental energy?" I asked after a few moments of contemplation.

Mizuki-sensei frowned. He hesitated. "That's true," he agreed after a long pause, "genjutsu is technically under the yin release - that is, techniques governed by mental energy - that's why we don't usually teach anything except how to break it at the academy. But it requires a lot of concentration and a very delicate touch. It can be very difficult to learn, expecially for somebody so young," he added. "Besides, it's a lot of work for very little gain. That's why genjutsu specialists are few and far between. I think it might be better to focus on something with a broader range of applications..."

I eyed him for a moment, but by then our feet had taken us to the steps of my house.

"Well, your head must still be killing you. Why don't you get an early night? You can think on it and get back to me," he suggested.

"Aa," I agreed, and we parted ways there.

The headache that night got worse before it got better. By the time I managed to bathe and get back up to my room it was so bad I had to squint to do my homework, and after that I pulled the blinds and crawled into bed in the blessed darkness, and never mind if it was only six and I hadn't eaten.

Cringing into my pillow, I wondered if this world had ibuprofen.

(Or cyanide. I wasn't feeling picky.)

The next morning I felt much less awful. I got up and, following a jog and my ritual abuse of the forest for taijutsu practice, I stretched, bathed, and thought about how the hell I was going to graduate. Even aside from that, if the bits of the manga I remembered meant anything, being a ninja was going to involve a serious amount of actual fighting - and significantly less sneaking and quiet murder or sabotage than the word 'ninja' might actually imply - and I was going to need to develop a complementary set of skills if I wanted to last even a second out there.

Heaven help me if I ended up fighting Orochimaru in the forest of death.

"Well," I muttered to myself, examining my notes rather wearily, "what _can_ I do?"

Theory, obviously. I was very good at theory. People who were bad at theoretical concepts did not study the arts; they went and studied something practical and useful instead. Konoha didn't really have much use for people who could evaluate the socio-political context and far-reaching impact or connotations of works of writing. It was. Uh...

It was kind of a niche.

(Although I was looking forward to reading the Icha Icha series if I could get my grubby prepubescent hands on it.)

I turned over a page of my notes and began scribbling down the things I _could_ do.

Theory was all well and good, but hardly a combat skill. Although - quick analysis was, and I was good at that, too. Throwing things, definitely - I was still the top of the class for that. Even without the sharingan, I had really excellent eyes and my aim was fantastic - and it helped that I had fewer problems with the idea of inflicting pain and injury at a distance. When I wasn't imagining snapping people's bones and ligaments with my actual hands, it seemed a lot easier.

I was good at a _lot_ of the secondary skills, to be honest: astronavigation, tracking, tactical planning, critical analysis of intel and written reports. I could mark a trail, make a smokeless fire, do basic first aid and cook over an open fire.

I even had good scores in our survival exercises, despite being initially squeamish about killing and gutting a cute fluffy bunny for dinner. (From the way some of the chuunin instructors looked at me during that first exercise, I think some of them thought I was going to flip at the sight of the blood.) But bunnies weren't _people_, and I didn't have a lot of strong feelings about them.

None of that was actually useful for _fighting people. _

I scowled down at my scribbled notes.

Throwing weapons, I decided grimly, were what I had to work with. Well, plenty of ninja did very well using their throwing weapons. The academy only taught the use of kunai and shuriken, but I was certain the clan's library would have some information on others - senbon, at least, were fairly popular.

I glanced at the clock and realised I had to leave pretty much immediately if I wanted to be on time for class, so I grabbed my bag and left.

The walk to the academy gave me time to think over what had happened. Too much mental energy was a rare problem, and not one I remembered Sasuke having in the manga. After a little contemplation, I theorised it had something to do with me, personally. Perhaps all the years of extra experience from my past life had some impact on my ability to generate the different kinds of energy?

I'd probably never know for sure, since it wasn't information I intended to share with anybody, but it comforted me to have a theory.

"Ne, Sasuke-kun!" Sakura was suddenly, somehow, just _there_.

This was the first year I'd actually shared a class group with her, and I really did not know how to treat her. I knew she'd become pretty badass as she grew older, but right now she made me feel... uh...

Yeah, she creeped me the fuck out.

She was just a little too... intent.

I didn't even understand how it had happened. I wasn't the best in the class - at the moment that was, weirdly, Shino, who still didn't have any of his own fans. I was probably fourth or fifth, and I felt like I was surely soon to be _dead last,_ because apparently I couldn't be relied upon to execute the smallest of jutsu without passing out.

I had always assumed Sasuke had so many young, crazed admirers because he was talented and clever and, yes, kind of an asshole (sorry, "mysterious"). I knew I wasn't the most talented, and clever - well, sure, but it was hard to judge, given that I was more than a decade older than most of these kids - and I didn't _think_ I was an asshole.

I wasn't trying to be, if I was.

Although sometimes it was hard to have patience with a bunch of ten year olds.

Especially ten year olds like Sakura.

"It was so scary when you got hurt yesterday!" she exclaimed, inching closer. And closer. I swallowed, inching away. She reached out and casually touched my elbow, and I looked at her pale fingers in a state approaching panic. "Are you feeling okay now, Sasuke-kun?"

"Careful, Sakura, he's _delicate_," Kiba yelled, much more loudly than necessary, from only a few feet away. Heads turned.

He received a cuff over the head from his elder sister for his trouble. "Shut up," Hana said, rolling her eyes while he snarled at her and nursed his bruised skull.

I eyed him for a second - long enough for him to catch my eye and bare his teeth. I rolled my eyes. Idiot.

"I'm fine, Sakura," I said politely, trying to disentangle myself.

"Woman," said a familiar voice, and I braced myself because that was Shikamaru heaving a sigh, and on the tail of that would come -

"Ne, Sasuke-kun~" Ino appeared on my other side. She linked her arm through mine and rubbed her face on my shoulder like some overgrown cat.

I winced internally and cast my eyes about - maybe he was kind to mourning kids, but Inoichi was also hideously and terrifyingly protective of his baby girl. But it looked like Shikaku was slacking off from his real job to bring the kids to school today.

He looked bored, but his lip twitched when he met my eye.

He did absolutely nothing to draw Ino away from me.

Bastard.

From either side of me, Ino and Sakura were aiming impressive glares at one another. I wondered if they were going to forget me and start trying to murder each other. I could only hope. It may be my only chance for escape.

"Mou, Sakura-chan, still showing off your _giant forehead_?" Ino cooed sweetly.

"Sorry, what's that, Ino-pig? I couldn't hear you over the sound of how fat you are," Sakura sniped back, which, ouch. Sure, it was a play on the whole 'pig' thing but... Low blow, Sakura.

This situation, I thought grimly, would be very different if, oh,_ I could do the replacement technique. _

Between the two of them, electricity crackled and sparks flew.

While they were distracted, I shrugged their hands away gently and fled for my life.

That escape was all well and good, but by the time our lunch break came around that day, I had been consoled or teased by nearly everybody in my class ('nearly' everybody because Shikamaru, as a rule, didn't care; Hinata, as a rule, didn't _talk_), and also Mizuki-sensei was waiting expectantly for my answer.

Which, surprisingly, I actually had. "Poison," I said firmly.

For a second he looked surprised. His eyebrows rose. "Hmm, it makes sense," he admitted slowly. "Your record with throwing weapons is very good... There aren't any poison specialists working at the academy at the moment," he admitted, "but Suzume-sensei is good with plant-based poisons," Mizuki smiled a little. "I'll see what I can organise."

Two days later, I showed up in the middle of an open field while the rest of the class was doing ninjutsu practice.

Suzume turned out to be a fastidious chuunin-rank woman with narrow glasses, an upturned nose, and a tumbling mop of dark hair. She was, in her way, quite beautiful... but I felt absolutely nothing about it except a vague aesthetic appreciation.

I couldn't wait for puberty to be over. Having adult thoughts and childlike biology was _weird_.

She gave me an assessing look. "Mizuki-sensei says you have to miss ninjutsu practice for medical reasons?" she inquired.

I nodded.

She clicked her tongue. "With no ninjutsu and average taijutsu, you may well be better off in another line of work," she pointed out, settling her hands on the rounded swell of her hips. Suzume had a lovely hourglass figure, which was something of a rarity among ninja.

"So I've been told," I said blandly. Even if she was probably right, her comments definitely rubbed me the wrong way. I scowled at her. Sasuke's face was good for scowling. "Does it have anything to do with the lesson?"

Her lips thinned. "Only to determine the extent to which I may be wasting my time," she said flatly.

I frowned. "I'm aware of the disadvantages," I told her after a moment's hesitation. "But if I want to make it past genin-rank, I'm going to need to develop a fighting style that suits me. I think learning how to properly use poisons could be a part of that, since my throwing skills are good."

Suzume-sensei eyed me for a few more seconds, and then finally she sighed and adjusted her glasses. "That's a reasonable argument, I suppose," she agreed. "Fine. Let's get started."

That was how my lessons with Suzume-sensei began. We began with theory - a lot of theory - and she drilled it into me day after day, while the other kids learned how to do things that seemed a _lot_ more interesting - like turning themselves into other people and objects. How cool was that? I kept up on the theory of ninjutsu, because I desperately wanted to do it, but...

Well, my chakra control might have been better than Sasuke's was originally, but that didn't mean very much unless I could precisely use the correct amounts of physical and mental energy.

I was clinging to the idea that the medic had planted - that I might be able to learn that kind of control well enough to do _some_ ninjutsu, at least. With this in mind, I'd booked myself in to see a chakra specialist at the hospital for a consultation.

That was coincidentally on the same day that Suzume allowed me to do something more practical - which turned out to be coating the tips and edges of her weapons.

Yeah, evidently Suzume-sensei wasn't above using me for free labour. "Is this because you can't be bothered?" I wondered.

She eyed me over the rims of her glasses. While she could be grating and irritating - and she was obsessed with dirt, seriously - she was a clever person, and she had a very sharp tongue when she felt the need. "Uchiha, I am _allowing_ you to help me as part of your training. If you no longer want to learn about poisons, you may leave at any time."

I rolled my eyes. Okay, maybe I was being a little bit ungrateful. I sighed. "Sorry, sensei," I mumbled.

She sniffed, but didn't make any further comments. The work was interesting, anyway: Suzume-sensei used a variety of different poisons, but they were universally sourced from plants.

"I don't have to catch plants," she pointed out when I asked the obvious question. "Venom from animals can be extremely useful," she agreed, "but you still have to trap the animals and milk them of their venom. It's not impossible, but it is much less complicated to use plant-based poisons."

You would think, given that the village was basically a large, relatively peaceful fortress, that the ninja inside would all share resources: that there'd be centralised manufacture of a lot of our tools, medicines, poisons, antidotes and gear.

But that wasn't the case. Even inside clans, as far as I could tell, people clung tightly to their secrets. Specialised tools and techniques disappeared from use with every death, basically - and new ones appeared as people invented them. With ninja who weren't associated with any family group...

It seemed like either they took on a team of genin, they took on a specific apprentice, or they never taught anybody. There were exceptions - Tsunade was a good example, because she shared several of her medical techniques for the good of the village. But in general... yeah, information and skills did not come cheap in Konoha.

This common, rather paranoid, secrecy made me wonder how people had really looked upon the Uchiha clan - maybe there was more than one reason they'd all been killed, after all. Stealing other ninja's secrets with a glance was not a good way to make friends.

So I just nodded when Suzume told me about the trouble she'd have to go to in order to get poisons from animals. It made sense, even if it seemed kind of lazy.

"Since you're so eager to help," she said drily when she'd finished rolling her weapons into their protective casings, "you can help me grind up strychnine seeds."

"Really?" I blinked.

Her smile probably should have been a warning. "Really," she agreed. "I think you'll find it educational."

Suzume-sensei signed me out of the academy with a wave to a distracted Mizuki-sensei and took me out to the forest.

"Here," she said, once we'd arrived at a very primitive looking stone table. It wasn't exactly laboratory material.

"You'd think they'd put aside a space in the hospital or something," I muttered, thinking of the medical research rooms.

"You'd kill too many people if you had an accident," Suzume pointed out, handing me a breathing filter and a pair of gloves, both of which I pulled on carefully.

She examined the safety precautions before flicking open a scroll and producing a pile of flat, disc-shaped little seeds. From my study of the theory behind plant-based poisons, I knew that they'd already been cut from the fruit, cleaned, dried and sorted out. It seemed like most of the work had basically been done.

"You say that now," she said ominously when I pointed this out. Then she heaved a sigh through her filter. "We'd better get started."

And that was how I learned that it's really, _really_ hard to grind down strychnine seeds. It wasn't like grinding wood, or coffee beans, or - or anything, really. They were harder than some types of steel, I was sure of it.

"Having fun yet?" Suzume-sensei asked me after about an hour of "education".

I grunted, trying to ignore the burgeoning ache in my shoulders and arms. At least she was doing it with me - small comfort, but comfort nonetheless.

It only took us two hours or so to grind up all the seeds Suzume-sensei wanted, but by the time we were done my arms were screaming.

"Why do you even need poisoned weapons?" I wondered, watching her carefully as she showed me how to seal away the important bits. The dust had settled, but we still had to be careful not to inhale any of it.

Suzume-sensei raised her eyebrows. "Academy teachers wouldn't be very good at teaching ninja skills if we never went on missions," she pointed out.

I eyed her. She didn't _look_ like she did a lot of missions. She looked... curvy and luxurious and carefully put-together. "...really?"

She laughed, then gave me a mysterious smile. "Oh, Uchiha-kun," she said, sounding terribly amused. "Not all missions are about sweating and fighting, ne?" Then she leaned forward and ruffled my hair. Her glasses flashed in an errant ray of light. "If you were a kunoichi, you might understand," she assured me.

That was... not as comforting as she probably assumed, since I was still getting used to the part of my new life where I was biologically male.

* * *

The chakra specialist turned out to be a branch Hyuuga with a blank face and a soft voice. Although most of that clan were combat specialists, a few of them did seem to go into medicine. I'd even seen one or two of them leaving the T&I building, which I didn't necessarily want to contemplate.

He had me do several chakra control exercises - sticking paper to my forehead, then my fingertips, then several fingertips at once.

I thought his expectations of my ability to manipulate chakra were a little biased, since he seemed colossally unimpressed when I admitted I couldn't stick more than two pieces of paper to my skin at once. I was pretty sure nobody else in my class could do that either, but it didn't prevent me from feeling thoroughly embarrassed under his cool gaze.

Eventually he gestured me imperiously back into the seat across from him and tucked some long, dark hair away from his face. The seal on his forehead showed up clear and bright, and he seemed totally unashamed about it. "I would be very surprised, Sasuke-san, if you were ever capable of a B-class ninjutsu or higher."

I stared at him.

His expression didn't waver. Sympathy was probably a feeling the Hyuuga clan had bred out long ago. "Your chakra control is simply not good enough, and it never will be. While practice can help, and will likely allow you the use of E- and D- ranked ninjutsu with time," he went on blandly, "other factors influence your control. One is the amount of chakra you have - which is a lot, for your age," he admitted, although his tone didn't imply that was a particularly good thing, "but many of them are genetic. Almost all of the Uchiha clan has - _had _-" he corrected himself, looking briefly but acutely uncomfortable "-good, workmanlike chakra skills, but..."

I rubbed my forehead. Already I could feel a headache coming on. Again. "Perfect chakra control is pretty rare," I finished for him.

He nodded.

I tapped my fingertips on his desk. "If I wanted to improve?"

"Practice," he said, "although you'd be better off working on your aptitude for the two other shinobi disciplines. Taijutsu is necessary for any genin wishing to advance, and genjutsu can be extremely difficult to learn, but it would be significantly less likely to cause you to fall unconscious, which," he added a little drily, "can only be an advantage in combat."

A Hyuuga with a sense of humour. How rare. Of course I'd only find one when he was laughing at my expense.

"Thank you, sensei," I said grimly, and excused myself.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Hello! I have a new chapter. Minimal interaction with main characters this chapter, but that will change very soon. I realise my conceptualisation of how chakra works isn't necessarily one hundred per cent canon, but I'm keeping it anyway. Basically: SI Sasuke is never going to be able to use B-, A- or S-rank ninjutsu. With sufficient practice, E- and D- ranks will definitely be possible. I think C-ranks will depend on a number of factors: understanding, affinity, whether or not there's a strong mental component, etc.,

The information about strychnine seeds is largely true... and strychnine poisoning is a _terrible_ way to die.

**Responses to reviewers**:

**safranbrod**, I think that, yeah, she'll end up with Kakashi either way, just because of the sharingan. I also think Naruto will probably end up with Kakashi because he'd almost HAVE to be in on the whole Naruto-is-Minato's-kid thing, so he'd be less biased, and also because Kakashi is probably the jounin instructor who has the best chance of not dying immediately, or maybe being able to get a message out, if the seal faltered (I mean... other than Tenzou, who is presumably busy doing... uh, important tree business).

**4everfictional,** Naruto is in another class at the moment. I figure because Naruto failed the exam so many times he must have been put in the academy early, and thus in an older class. I could be wrong, but it made sense at the time. I'm sure we'll run into him soon. :)

Thank you, **Domino necklace**! I don't know if it will impact on the team assignments, to be honest. It seems ridiculous that everybody who already knew Naruto was the kyuubi jinchuuriki went "oh he's the weakest in the class, boo," to me? Because, well, uh... it seems obvious... that he wouldn't be? I mean... I don't even know, a lot of Konoha's policy around team assignments and Naruto in particular doesn't really make sense to me, but... yeah. I am hoping to stick with the same team, I think, for reasons I mentioned to safranbrod above.

Interesting thought, **potterinu**, but I don't think I'm clever enough to consistently write Shika. It's kind of the downside to declaring that x character is a genius, don't you think?

Thank you to everybody who left me a review! You're all very kind. : )


	5. Chapter 5

I had a few more conversations with Mizuki about learning genjutsu, but he remained firm in his position that it would only distract me from the work I was doing at the academy. If I heard the phrase "why don't you work on your taijutsu instead?" one more time I thought I was probably going to scream.

My instructors thought that my hesitation in close combat came from a single, very recent, traumatic event, and that there was still all of Sasuke's earlier desensitisation to build on if I just worked hard enough. I was pretty much unable to correct that assumption without drawing a lot of scary attention to myself, so I simply didn't.

I spent a lot of my rapidly-dwindling spare time sorting through texts in the family library. Unfortunately, the Uchiha libraries seemed to assume a working knowledge of the very basics of almost every discipline they discussed. That wasn't a problem when I was reading about poisons or shurikenjutsu, but since the academy taught virtually nothing about genjutsu, it was a topic on which I found myself completely lost. Even worse, it seemed like the Uchiha clan had basically no interest in genjutsu when it wasn't cast by the sharingan.

I would like to say that I got onto it immediately and sought out more information, but the truth of the matter is that I was already over-committed: when I wasn't engaged in formal learning at the academy or with Suzume-sensei, I was running for fitness and speed, doing taijutsu practice or focusing on endless and hideously repetitive chakra control exercises.

I could be found after school, now, carefully sticking bits of paper to myself with my chakra. Keeping my attention on multiple things at once was actually really tricky. It took me almost a month to get up to four papers.

"Good thing _I'm_ not the main character," I muttered to myself when I finally - _finally_ - reached that milestone.

Although I was, technically, _a_ main character. And that worried me. The sort of stuff that happened to Sasuke in the future...

I wasn't sure if I even remembered it all clearly, let alone that I had much idea about how to fix it. Weren't all Sasuke's problems basically related to how he ran away from Konoha to follow Orochimaru? And wasn't that because he wanted the power to kill Itachi?

I didn't especially want to kill Itachi, so it all seemed kind of moot.

All I had to do was not betray Konoha to Orochimaru.

Right? Right.

I was sure that would be a lot easier said than done, but... well, no plan survives contact with the enemy. I had years yet, and right now the only thing I could do was train hard, train often, and try my best to be prepared for what might be coming my way.

Of course I had days when I couldn't muster the motivation to be so very disciplined. On those days I could usually just about manage to get out of bed and go for a jog, but anything else left me frustrated and itching to skive off and go do something interesting. Training, for all its physical benefits, was not always a thrilling pastime.

I usually spent that time lazing around in bed thinking about the things and people I'd lost - which was depressing like you would not _believe_. Or, more sensibly, and increasingly as time wore away the fierceness of my grief, I'd spend them doing other necessary things.

In my previous life I'd loved sewing and cooking, and now, when I couldn't handle dedicating myself to training for one more second, I spent that time in a way that felt both productive and enjoyable.

My clothes always seemed to need mending, which I supposed was just a part of being a ninja. When I wore them too thin they went into the rag basket, where I used them for cleaning - a necessary chore, but one I absolutely loathed.

There was something extremely meditative about sewing, about watching stitches progress through my fabric under the flash of a needle. My eyes were good - better than they'd ever been, really - and my fingers were small but deft. It was a soothing pastime. I tried cooking, but the available produce meant that I ended up with a lot of slightly weird experiments before I started to understand how the available flavours worked together. In this world, a ninja village like Konoha was not really designed for open trade, so a lot of what could be got at the market here was limited to what was locally grown. We ate well enough, with nearby farming settlements and carefully-guarded village emergency stores, but... well, variety was not at all the same. There was a lot of rice, vegetables and meat, and many things were dehydrated, pickled or salted to keep for long periods.

I made an effort to check out the cook books the clan had left behind, but... well, they were often written in indecipherable shorthand and with scrawled revisions. They weren't at all like the kinds of cook books I was used to in my old life. The best kept one was probably Uchiha Mikoto's, and her handwritten recipes were very strange to me. Her notes contained all sorts of recipes, from basic onigiri to the most complicated sets of recipes for seasonal kaiseki.

I had never even tried to make onigiri before. My first attempt was not specifically a disaster, but the balls of rice did not hold their shape very well, so... I ended up eating a bowl of rice and seaweed and pickled plums. Which wasn't bad, but...

Yeah.

Mostly I decided to stick to simple stuff: rice and fried meat and steamed or blanched vegetables. And if it wasn't very exciting, well... at least it was nutritious.

Shopping for food in and of itself could be a little bit of a trial. It had been two years since the massacre, but every time I left the compound people looked at me swore I could see them thinking 'there's that boy whose whole family is dead,' and maybe that was just me being crazy and paranoid about it, but I didn't think so. I really didn't like it.

I tried not to end up at the market more than once a week, because civilians were even less subtle than ninja. "Tut, tut," they'd say, peering down at me, "it's not right, a boy like you living all on your own. Can't anybody do anything?"

And then, having learned my lesson the first time I pointed out that I didn't really want to live with anybody else, I'd lie and tell them, "No. Nobody can do anything. It's political."

And then they'd coo over how clever I must be to understand the idea of a political decision and send me on my way.

It was a little... disconcerting, to say the least.

It was true that I preferred being on my own, but it was also true that being on my own was horribly lonely. It certainly didn't help that I wasn't great at making friends. I hadn't ever had really great social skills, even in my previous life. It was getting better, a little, as I remembered more and more what ten year olds were like, but...

Suzume was basically my only adult company, and she still operated under the assumption that I was a kid. A clever kid, but a kid nonetheless.

Still, her lessons began to seem like a bright spot in my day, because it was one of the few times when I wasn't either completely alone or surrounded by screaming ninja children.

"Mou," she sighed, watching me like a hawk while I was making a tincture of aconite. "Sasuke, you need to be more careful. You know it can be absorbed through your skin."

"I am being careful," I pointed out. I was, too - it was just a little hard to avoid skin contact, despite the gloves. I wasn't about to tell her, but there was already a tiny tingling on my wrist where I'd accidentally let a leaf linger too long on a patch of skin not covered by my gloves.

She gave me a look that said that she knew exactly what I hadn't told her, which was probably true. Ninjas, man. Then she sighed. "If you're really serious about working with poisons," she said after a long pause, "you should begin taking low doses to build up a tolerance. Especially," she added, scrunching up her nose, "if you ever want to work with them in a combat capacity."

Mithridatism, I knew, had few really good applications in real life back in my old world - mostly snake handlers, I thought I remembered? But here, there were people poisoning each other freaking everywhere, and the body's mechanisms were heavily reliant on chakra. As ninja, our heavily developed chakra systems made our healing even further divorced from what I'd learned in my previous life about biology.

So instead of wondering about this, I just nodded. "Aa," I said, not taking my eyes off the leaves. After a second I added: "How do I start?"

"Did you have anything planned for this weekend?" she asked, tapping her lower lip.

"Training."

She hmmed. "Well, this is training too. You can take Saturday off. We can start with something fairly benign - non-fatal, common..." she began searching through her belongings for a particular scroll. Finished with my preparation of tincture of aconite, I sat back and watched her curiously.

"Ah," she said finally. With a puff of smoke she produced a handful of nutmeg seeds. "What can you tell me about these?" she asked.

I eyed them. "They contain myristicin. It's not often lethal, but it's easy to slip into food because it's used in much smaller doses as a spice. The taste is therefore familiar and less likely to be noticed. Physical effects include headaches, nausea, dizziness, confusion, red eyes, loss of memory and sometimes paranoia..." I thought for a long moment. Knowing the symptoms was all well and good, but a poisoner also had to know why you might want to use it. "It can last for more than a day, and it's useful for making somebody miss a planned event or appointment due to illness. Usually people recover without medical help. It's not a combat poison, though," I pointed out.

"No," she said, "but there have been several occasions on which I've had to eat a meal with my mark, and it would have been very inconvenient to get sick. So you may as well do the thing properly. You've got at least another year before you even attempt the graduation exam, correct?"

I nodded.

"Well then," she shrugged, "we've got plenty of time to work through poisons. It would be dangerous to try to adapt to all of them at once. You might as well start with this one."

She calculated the dose for my weight in her head and began counting out seeds.

It tasted terrible. I also felt a certain degree of anxiety about the process. Taking poison seemed like the opposite of a good idea, really. But I resolved to think of it as a kind of unpleasant, slightly risky medical intervention.

I swallowed the dose Suzume-sensei prepared for me despite my anxiety. She was correct, and the more poisons I could build a resistance to the better I could use them. At least I knew this was unlikely to be fatal, even if she had the dose wrong.

"All right," she checked her watch. "You might not have much in the way of side-effects," she shrugged, "which will be all to the better, I imagine. Still. Make sure you drink water and eat food and don't train today or tomorrow and you'll be fine."

I nodded seriously.

She kept an eye on me for the next several hours, during which my only symptoms appeared to be sweating and dryness of mouth. Just in case, we stopped working with real poisons and went back to theoretical work. Since I had the basics down, Suzume-sensei liked to tell me stories illustrating where certain compounds had been used to great effect.

I'm not saying that I wouldn't have preferred to be learning how to do cool ninjutsu, but it was also pretty interesting listening to how poisons dumped in the water supply were excellent for mimicking disease, how you could mess with a target's memory without ever resorting to chakra, how you could induce anger or lust or anxiety or depression in another person...

Over time, it had become clear to me that Suzume-sensei, beneath her tightly-laced exterior, had an almost romantic love of control.

No wonder she liked this shit.

When the final bell rang, she examined my eyes, checked my pulse and asked me how I felt. I felt a little fuzzy, a bit hungover, but otherwise nothing too bad.

"Good," she nodded. "All right, go home. _No training,_" she added.

"I heard you," I rolled my eyes. I pulled my bag over one shoulder and made the walk home.

Leaving the academy was usually a test of my stealth skills, because if I wasn't careful one of the girls would walk with me the whole way home and give me cow-eyes, brimming with tears, at the gates of the abandoned clan compound.

Sometimes I could rely on a _little _help. I didn't have many friends, no, but I'd developed a relatively cordial relationship with Chouji, who was far and away the sweetest of the kids in my cohort. And maybe Shikamaru was the smartest - well, not maybe, really, he was very, very smart, in a sleepy-eyed and languid way that showed only in a very occasional lightning crack of brilliance - but I thought Chouji was the most mature by far.

The best thing about Chouji in this case, though? He was big enough to shield me. I don't know how he felt about that, since he could be quite sensitive about his bulk (which was ridiculous, since almost all of his family techniques required it, but, hey, kids could be cruel), but he never complained about it. If I was quick, quiet, and very, very careful, I could get past all the other students with nobody but him the wiser.

Today was... not that day.

Unfortunately.

"Sasuke-kuuuun!"

Oh, god. I knew Ino and Sakura were both going to grow up to be competent, effective ninja, but as kids they just made me feel faintly ashamed for my entire gender.

Was I ever like that?

I couldn't remember. I sure hoped not.

Ino attached herself to my arm immediately. I let it happen while I contemplated my options - and once again I resolved to practice my chakra control diligently so I could one day learn the replacement technique.

Within seconds, Sakura flew to my other side and I was once again bracketed by them. "I didn't see you during lunch today, Sasuke-kun," she told me with big, worried green eyes, and -

Oh, god, these girls were scary. Their eyes burned with a fierce intensity.

"That's correct," I told her, looking around for an escape route.

I could see Akimichi Chouza up ahead, standing inches above the few other parents and siblings who showed up to meet with the students leaving the academy. Even if he hadn't been taller than everybody else, his wild hair was easily detectable in a crowd. Chouji was already there with him, munching on a packet of crisps and telling his father about something.

I wondered if the older ninja would be able to somehow sense me if I stared at him hard enough. Inoichi certainly could. It took Chouza a few seconds longer, but he did look up after a moment.

Whatever expression was on my face must have been very entertaining, because he cracked a huge smile. "Ino-chan!" he boomed, waving to her.

She winced a little at the sound, and looked upon Chouza and Chouji grimly, as though they were both a hideous embarrassment to be borne. I didn't know what her problem was, really, since Chouza was a towering beast of a man in full armour. There were more intimidating shinobi in Konoha, but not by much. Surely intimidating was badass and thus cool?

But Ino didn't seem to think so, and she shrunk away a little as Chouza strode forward to envelop her in a crushing hug. He lifted her off her feet and swung her into the air, almost taking me with her.

Next to me, Sakura paled and her grip on me loosened as she tried to edge away. That was all I needed: I slipped free of her and disappeared into the crowd. A moment later I heard her say "Eh? Eh!" in the sudden realisation that she'd lost me.

Phew.

I made it home without any other scary run-ins, did my written homework and ate a rice ball. I didn't feel great, and my eyes looked really red in the mirror, but over all, this didn't seem so bad. If this was what developing immunity to poisons was going to be like, I was sure I'd be fine.

Within fifteen minutes of that thought, of course, I was confused and upset and my thoughts were racing away from me in a trail of glittering light. I couldn't quite catch them. Everything was moving too fast.

I stood in the bathroom, looking in the mirror. Every time I thought I was going to be okay to leave the bathroom my stomach would heave and and wriggle with nausea.

I hunched over the sink and tried to breathe my way to calmness. It didn't help much. Lights flickered in front of my eyes.

After ten or twenty minutes I lowered myself to the floor. The bathroom was tiled. If I vomited everywhere it wouldn't be that hard to clean up. I rested my back against the wall and waited.

And waited.

I'd had some fairly horrible nights in my life. This wasn't as frightening as the night I'd died, but it... it wasn't great.

I felt crazy, like everything was terribly wrong and my stomach was trying to crawl out my throat. When I stood up enough to see myself in the bathroom mirror I flinched away. Who was that? What was that person doing there? Oh. It was me.

I wanted it to stop, but there was no stopping it. I had to wait it out.

"It's not lethal," I assured myself every time I panicked and felt like I should rush off to the clinic. "It's not lethal."

By the time light was coming through the window high above the sink again, my eyelids felt like they were made of sandpaper.

I felt terrible.

Was it meant to last this long?

I had to think very hard to dredge up that information. Yes, I thought. It would probably last for some time.

I got up and vomited into the toilet bowl. Hmm. I needed to clean the toilet. Not my favourite task. The sounds of my retching made strange colours dance in front of my eyes.

I thought back to what Suzume-sensei had said. I needed to drink water and eat something. I was sure she hadn't expected this, but -

I stumbled to the kitchen.

Upon realising that I had no food, because I usually went shopping at the market on Saturdays, I swore. It came out more as a weird croak.

Maybe I could just go to bed.

I didn't feel like I could sleep.

Maybe I should go back to the bathroom?

I thought about Suzume-sensei's instructions. 'Make sure you drink water and eat food,' and I didn't know what to do. Everything was very, very confusing.

I shoved a glass under the faucet and downed a cup of water quickly. It made my stomach roll, but not too badly. Probably it was still resting from having thrown up earlier.

Food.

There was a convenience store only a couple of blocks away from the compound. I could probably get something there. I thought about the walk. Could I do that?

I was relatively steady on my feet, even though everything was a bit fuzzy and I felt like I couldn't move fast enough. Objects left trails of light and colour in my vision when I moved my head, but I could walk.

Yeah, I thought. I could do that.

I grabbed some money and headed out.

I was about a block away from the store when the whole world seemed to rush at me all at once and I had the sudden panicked thought that, no, I _couldn't _do this.

"Don't be ridiculous," I muttered, closing my eyes against all the strange external stimuli. The light and colour continued behind my eyelids. I breathed. Okay. It was going to be okay.

I kept walking.

Making it all the way to the convenience store actually felt like an enormous victory. It was about eight in the morning and the place was mostly empty, except for a bored-looking cashier who did not even glance up when I entered.

Instant noodles, I thought, spotting them. That would be great. Barely any preparation required. I went to get them. Any flavour that wasn't sweet.

As I approached it became apparent that a weird orange streak was between me and the noodles.

"Hey, hey, are you okay?" It asked.

I squinted. Oh, no, that wasn't a hallucination. That was a boy dressed in bright orange, he just wouldn't stop moving. He waved a hand at my face.

Oh, I thought. That was Naruto.

I knew I'd have to run into him eventually, but this was not how I'd expected that to go.

I couldn't deal with this right now. I just - I had to get the food and leave and go home. That was the goal. Right.

"I'm fine," I said, ignoring how everything lit up when I spoke. I_ was_ fine, really. I was just experiencing some unpleasant side effects.

"You look really sick," he said, peering at me. He was too close. I jerked away. "Your eyes are all red."

"I'm _fine_," I growled. I didn't need this. I just needed to pay for my goddamn noodles and go home where I could wallow in how incredibly terrible I felt and plot Suzume-sensei's demise. She could _not_ have miscalculated the dose so badly.

He scowled at me. "I'm just trying to help, you grumpy bastard," he said.

"Hey!" the cashier's voice cut across our conversation. "Is that brat bothering you?" There was a very dark stare shot in Naruto's direction. "If you're going to bother my customers, you can leave, you little-"

It was a struggle to see Naruto's face, but I probably didn't have to. From his voice, which lit everything an angry red, he was probably looking mutinous. "I'm just trying to -"

"No," I said very flatly. Maybe I didn't want to deal with Naruto, who was a hyperactive loud little shit, but the way some of the villagers took any excuse to make his life more difficult... that made me annoyed. "That's really rude," I added, because I couldn't think of any better words.

The cashier's eyebrows rose. "Well, he's..."

"Whatever," I said, which was equally rude. I shoved my packets of noodles onto the counter - five to a pack, multiple flavours. Perfect. I put down some money and left.

"Hang on, do you want your change?"

I ignored the voice of the cashier. My stomach was rolling and the lights were dancing.

The bell ringing above the door of the convenience store was clearly my undoing, because it caused a sudden wash of nausea that meant I ended up bracing myself against the wall of the shop and throwing up, again.

"Suzume-sensei..." I growled, staring exhaustedly at the unpaved street. It was early enough that almost nobody was out, and most of the stores were still shut. Which was good, because I didn't especially want them to see me vomiting in the street like a common drunk.

"Hey!" That was Naruto. _Again_.

I braced myself with one hand on the wall, the other clutching my noodles like a lifeline.

"Hey, you're really not okay," he said. "You need a, uh, a doctor or something," he went on.

Yeah, _that_ would be embarrassing: 'Well, sensei, I poisoned myself on purpose and now I need you to fix it.'

"It'll wear off," I said firmly, finally straightening up.

When I got my eyes to focus, Naruto did not look happy. He looked recalcitrant and stubborn with his eyebrows drawn and his hands clenched.

"It will wear off," I said again. "I had a training accident. I just need to go home and eat some food and sleep it off."

He brightened. "A training accident? Ne, ne, are you gonna be a ninja too?"

"At this rate who even knows," I muttered, too low for him to hear.

"Eh?" he leaned in closer.

"Yes, I'm training to be a ninja. Right now, though, I need to go home, which means I need you to not be in my way."

He gave me a suspicious look. "I'll walk you," he declared magnanimously, as though he was actually doing me a favour.

"No, I-"

"Which way? This way?"

"This way, idiot," I corrected him, and then he grinned and I realised I'd just implied he'd be walking me home, which...

Dammit. It wasn't fair to pick on drugged people!

"Are you at the academy?" he asked cheerfully, throwing my arm over his shoulder. He was shorter than me, but not by much. It was actually kind of nice to have somebody to lean against right then.

"Are you always this friendly?" I shot back darkly. I knew I should be nice to Naruto for all sorts of reasons - he was the main character, he'd be an absolute monster in combat when he was a little older, he was ridiculously loyal to his precious people, he was lonely and it was the right thing to do... and of course not least because if he lost his temper he could unleash a giant murderous demon fox and kill me. He probably wouldn't, but the possibility existed.

But I was confuse and tired and so, so sick, and he was _annoying_. He didn't exactly make it easy on me.

"Ahaha," he laughed nervously, scratching his neck with one hand. "Well..."

I eyed him, but didn't say anything. I had no idea why he was trying to be friendly. "Okay," I sighed. "We turn here."

"Eh? But there's nothing down there," he said. He squinted at me. "Are you lost?"

"I'm not _lost_," I growled, shoving him with one hip. "My house is down there." I totally didn't need him helping me along. I straightened and took off on my own.

"Hey!" He caught up easily, and fell into step. "You're sure?"

"Am I sure if _this is where I live_?" I snapped back incredulously.

"Ehh... I guess you would be." He scratched his chin. "Just, 'cause everybody says that's where all the ghosts live."

"Ghosts don't live there. Ghosts don't _live_," I said. I'd had no idea that people were telling each other the Uchiha compound was haunted. That was... rude. Humiliating. I wondered if other kids in my cohort at the academy were saying that.

There was a wooden gate beneath the square arch, atop which the Uchiha fan was displayed. I shoved it open and walked in. Naruto followed me, but I didn't call him on it.

"If there's no ghosts," Naruto said, peering around, "why is there nobody here?" I could see him hesitate at the sight of one of the more damaged houses. My vision swam.

"If you don't want to be here, you can go," I pointed out.

He scowled. "I'm just asking."

Another wave of nausea hit me. Fucking _Suzume_. "Ask when I'm not poisoned," I growled.

"Eh? You got poisoned? How did you - Hey! Hey, wait," he broke into a trot to keep up with me, and then he was going a mile a minute, mouth rattling off whatever came into his mind.

I unlocked the door and kicked my shoes off in the genkan.. "Here," I shoved my instant noodles at him. "Boil the water. Make some ramen. You can have half of it, leave me some. I need..."

What did I need?

Sleep. To _not_ be poisoned.

"I need the bathroom," I decided, as my stomach contemplated rejecting its lining.

Naruto's brain seemed to have stopped entirely at the word 'ramen' and he rocketed off in the direction I'd pointed. He hadn't bothered to take his shoes off, which was... really rude, but he probably didn't mean it to be. He wasn't leaving tracks anyway.

I went up to the bathroom, hovered uncertainly for a few minutes and muttered some more curses when I did not, in fact, have to throw up. I washed out my mouth and grabbed some of my notes from Suzume-sensei's classes then headed down to where I could hear the sound of the kettle heating.

Naruto was messing around with the stuff on the kitchen table, which was mostly just homework and a few practice weapons. "So you _are_ in the academy?" he looked so excited about something and I honestly couldn't be sure what.

"I am," I agreed. I was beginning, slowly, to feel more lucid... but also more hung over. And sleepy. I flipped through my notes until I found a section on myristicin. "Nausea, dizziness, dry mouth, confusion, red eyes, hallucinations..."

Yeah, she'd definitely given me too much. She couldn't have done this by accident. I snapped the book shut, scowling.

Naruto had been talking.

"What?" I asked.

"You want the shrimp or the pork?" he repeated.

I realised that the kettle had boiled.

"Shrimp," I said vaguely. It all just tasted like salt and fat to me.

Three minutes later a steaming styrofoam cup was planted on the table in front of me. I looked up.

Naruto sat down with his pork flavoured ramen and began inhaling it. I poked at mine without much enthusiasm.

"Oo ont ike amer?" he asked.

He pointed at the noodles, so I had some idea of what he'd said. His manners really were kind of appalling. "It's fine," I said, sipping at the oily, synthetic-flavoured broth. "I'm just not hungry."

Not hungry was something of an understatement.

"Hey, yeah, what kinda training were you doing anyway?" Naruto peered at me curiously.

"Training?"

"You said you had a training accident, right?"

"I'm studying poisons. Suzume-sensei made a mistake in a demonstration, and-"

"S_uzume-sensei?_" Naruto interrupted, bursting out suddenly in laughter.

I tilted my head. "...yeah?"

"But she's the _girls_' teacher! Ne, ne, are you gonna be a kunoichi?"

I snorted softly, and then wished I hadn't when my whole person seemed to give an answering throb. Perhaps that would have been insulting to any other prepubescent boy out there, but I was fundamentally immune to caring about that.

"I could be," I said after a second, thoughtfully. 'Kunoichi' was more of a role than a fixed idea about gender. Seductionists, saboteurs, spies, quiet assassins... that was the role of the kunoichi. They were more like traditional ninja, really. It wasn't what I wanted, but it wasn't a bad fallback position, either. It didn't really matter to me if it was "girly", because... well, I was a girl. Not physically, but... Well, whatever. Maybe I should look into it?

"Eh?" Naruto just looked puzzled at that comment.

I eyed my noodles and decided that gender roles and why they were bullshit was a topic for another day. Or maybe never. Never was pretty good for me, too, actually. "I asked Suzume-sensei to teach me about poisons. There was an accident, now I'm sick. I'll probably fall asleep soon."

That was glossing over the more complicated bits, but it was essentially true.

Naruto made a noise of understanding, and then, without any warning, he began talking about ramen. I grunted occasionally to let him know I was listening, which I was not, and he just kept going under his own power.

When I woke up it was dark and he was gone.

My face was stuck to the lid of a noodle cup, which had been discarded on the table. Okay.

I got to my feet and found that everything ached, but I felt a lot more lucid, and...

...and my clock said I'd slept all day, all night, and all day again.

It was after dark _the next night. _

I rubbed my hands through my hair, finding a gross layer of crusty sweat. Gross. Shower. Shower time, definitely.

When my alarm buzzed in the morning I was still tired, but I was clean and functional. I ripped open another cup of noodles for breakfast because there was literally no other food, downed three glasses of water, and then set off to face the day.

I dodged Ino and Sakura successfully and was in class by the time Mizuki-sensei arrived. Shikamaru had given me one long, sideways glance, but not commented, and Chouji hadn't seemed to notice anything different about my looks.

I made it all the way through Mizuki-sensei's lecture, the physical conditioning practice - which was, at the very least, absolute child's play compared to the amount of training I did daily - and somehow drew Shikamaru to spar against, _thank god. _

He looked at me from across the space we'd been allocated. "I could probably beat you," he said, cracking a yawn.

I thought about it. In a straight-up physical fight, usually I'd beat Shikamaru. I might not be able to break his bones with a punch, but stamina wasn't his strong point, and his taijutsu forms were sloppy. I was sure that on a normal day I could dodge or block anything he threw at me and wear him down until he either dropped or forfeited - in Shikamaru's case, forfeit was much more likely. Today... I wasn't sure he'd win, but...

We both knew I wasn't at my best.

Still, I wasn't about to forfeit to Shikamaru of all people! I settled into a combat stance and showed him my teeth. "Wanna find out?"

He heaved a giant sigh and raised his hand. "I forfeit," he said.

Bluffing. I rolled my eyes and relaxed.

"What the hell?" Kiba bellowed at him, as though he was actually surprised. I wasn't quite sure why, since Shikamaru forfeited about sixty per cent of his spars.

Mizuki-sensei just sighed. "Uchiha wins by forfeit, okay, next."

I hid a sigh of relief. Running and jumping and throwing was one thing, but I didn't really want to do any actual sparring today. After the break, it was ninjutsu practice for the other kids and I...

I went to find Suzume-sensei.

"You," I hissed when I found her.

She glanced over her shoulder and smiled. Her spectacles reflected the light brightly. "Well, really," she said, "what did you think was going to happen, taking poison from a ninja?"

She _had_ poisoned me on purpose.

I stared. "You're my _teacher_."

"And it's nice that you have so much faith in me, Sasuke," she said, curving her full lips into a sweet smile, "but you shouldn't trust people so easily." She leaned forward and tapped my nose. "Ne?"

I ground my teeth. "You're a terrible teacher," I glowered.

"Am I? I'm sure you won't forget the lesson in a hurry." She thumped a scroll against my chest and I caught it reflexively. "There now, you can calculate the dose for your next poison all on your own."

And then she left.

That _bitch_.

But she was right.

Lesson learnt.

* * *

This was so much longer than I wanted it to be. It's literally about three times as long as I thought it should be. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

Some people asked about where Naruto was. My excuse is, he's not in their class yet because he has to flunk the graduation exam, yeah? Also because it was very important to me that SI meet Naruto while stoned. :P

**Palomides** - I guess? I get really sick of SI characters who go on and on with tedious planning about the future. I think this SI does a little, but... Eh. The Sharingan is something about which decisions will be made later.

Um, also, if you do happen to take a whole heap of nutmeg, you will make yourself really sick. Really sick. You will hallucinate, which is a good enough reason for some people, but... really sick. Just don't.

**Ox King** commented: "Personally, I would set up a talk with the Hokage. Either get me some help or I'm I'm dropping out of the academy. The way I see it if new Sasuke can't fight for nothing, what's the point?" I guess if you want to read a story where somebody takes over Sasuke's body and powergames the narrative with their foreknowledge and his skills, then you should probably go write that. Or, well, it probably exists somewhere. Look a little harder?

Um, well, **HAL23**,the SI is bi. I'm assuming the character will remain bi, but I don't really know. Anyway, given that _I'm_ the SI, it'd be weird for me if queer people didn't show up somewhere since there are so many awesome ones in my life IRL. So I think if that's not a thing you're up for, now is a good time to flee! FLEE FOR YOUR LIFE. Or at least for the things you want to read. ***shrug*** I do want to point out that I made a message about that at the top of the first chapter, though!

Hello **new fan**, thank you!

**Domino Necklace, **not... in a terrible _accident_, per se... *coughs nervously*

Sorry** 4everfictional! **Unlikely to see any giant overkill jutsu here.

Um, thank you if you reviewed! I appreciate your reviews. : )


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